


We were once young men

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:05:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whether they stay together or return to the war after, they still need this to remember that they're still alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We were once young men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skyblue_reverie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyblue_reverie/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Communication](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/777) by skyblue_reverie. 



The years take longer to pass these days. Leonard remembers when he thought time went so slow; when he was a boy and when he was a young man, and he is neither now. Once, he was careless with time, greedy with the peace he'd been given in life, even with the war brewing and raging around him. Like everyone he's ever met, the world wasn't enough, not like it was, and not until it was gone. Now there's the war, and days working in sickbay longer than the years had ever seemed, and the bone-deep exhaustion that makes him fearless where he once prayed in terror every night. The early days of the war, when it was just the Warning Shot War, before Nero reemerged and the Tholians got involved or the Orions went rogue, those were the good days. It was easy to hate Klingons before that, after the first attack on Earth, after the Kelvin and the famous infant survivor that started the war, Jim Kirk.

Jim's changed, too. Where he was once the cocky kid with something to prove, now he's just a tired man still living on an adrenaline high; on fanaticism that drives him every day and every night, even when they share a bed and especially when they don't. Once, when they were still young, still in love with the universe, Jim woke him in the middle of the night to see the stars in San Francisco. The stars were bright but the Leonids were brighter, and every time another star streaked past in the night sky, Jim would reach for Leonard's hand and give it a squeeze; an affirmation that they were alive and well, that there would one day be a better world. They didn't even know that they lived in the better world, that they were on the brighter side all along. He'd known then what he thought they'd be one day and forever, lovers or friends or both and neither at the same time. Today, they're none of those, not really. Friends and lovers, but above all confidantes and a lifeline—a reminder that not everything in the world around them is cruel, fucked up and hardened by the war.

Jim comes back from the mission blood-streaked and burned from phaser fire. Leonard can smell the acrid burn of atmosphere and knows, though Jim swears it was all routine, that things went wrong on the planet, just like the last three they've visited. Sulu is sitting on a biobed with M'Benga prodding his side with a dermal regenerator. Chekov isn't far away, Chapel forcing treatment on him while he's trying to insist that he thinks he's all right. He's not. He never really will be, if he ever was after the Klingon warning shot hit St. Petersburg like a bolt of divine lightning when Chekov was barely old enough to be parted from the mother that died with another eighty percent of the city. He's not all right. How could he be?

Leonard gives up looking for the answer to an impossible question and declares Jim fit enough to return to quarters, though he really shouldn't be out of sickbay. He shouldn't leave without a week's rest and a year's worth of therapy, and only then would Leonard be sufficiently satisfied that Jim might one day recover. There's no time for what Jim needs, and in the meantime, there's still the war raging around them, so there's just the same life-affirming fuck that happens every time one of them comes back like this.

The truth is that Leonard needs that fuck for more than tradition, more than something he can count on, or even for release. He needs it as much as Jim does, he is just never the one to initiate it, though they walk back to the captain's quarters wordlessly, knowing what will happen now. Jim reaches for his hand when the door to his quarters opens, almost tenderly, careless like they're back in the Academy, and draws him into the room so Leonard can play his part. He comes, they fuck, he leaves, and there's never time for anything more.

He pushes Jim against the heavy metal door, kisses him hard and leaves bruises with his fingers on his waist. They don't have much time. Jim should go to sleep instead of staying up to get fucked, but the trade off is necessary. Jim slides Leonard's uniform off expertly and Leonard is more gentle in helping him out of the bloody remnants of his uniform the moment he can get a grip on it.

Leonard knows this isn't enough for him, knows that Jim was never meant to be a hardened captain chasing his white whale through the war. It's an obsession, and it's one that leaves no room for being in love with anyone, though Leonard is absolutely certain that Jim does love him. Jim has his crew, though, and a crushing responsibility to them hanging heavier on his shoulders than the years of trying to buck his father's legend, the creation myth of this war-torn world that began with his birth.

They fall down to the bed, one of the few things that wasn't stripped out and replaced for efficiency when things got worse and the _Enterprise_ was recommissioned for the lead warship. The seven points of Jim's badge poke Leonard in the chest, but he pushes the black undershirt up and off of him, staring up at Jim. There are things he wants to tell him, but he has neither the words nor the will to be disappointed when Jim will choose this hellish life over safety, wherever the hell they could even find that. Leonard wants to ask him to defect with him, to leave Starfleet and the Confederation to their violent dance with Klingon and Tholian and Orion and all the people that have become monsters like them.

He doesn't, of course, but he does slick his fingers and stretch Jim, then push into him like this is some frantic, desperate thing. It is, he wishes it weren't, that they could fuck like this because they wanted, instead of for necessity. He's glad Jim is alive; he's glad they're both alive, even though Jim nearly dies every time and Leonard nearly did a week before on Centauri IX. He has the scar across his temple to prove it, because they've been on power rations in sickbay for a year now and there isn't enough power to do more than quickly mend wounds and leave them to scar. He's _glad_ they're alive, he just wishes he could cling a little tighter to Jim without being overbearing, to just keep him safe instead of just patching him together at the end of the day.

The second thrust is slower, almost gentle, and Leonard thinks—just like he always thinks—that this might be a slow fuck, that they might take the time off from the war to just be together, Leonard and Jim, not captain and doctor. Jim reaches up and touches his cheeks, then his neck when he falls backward and snaps his hips up toward him. A keening sob tears out of his chest, urging Leonard on, harder, faster, and Leonard is all too willing to oblige him. When the next thrust comes hard, he knows he's lost the chance for a long fuck again. Jim's chase will always win, and he will come second, third; last, it will always feel like. There isn't a place in Jim's life for more than this, there's probably not one in Leonard's either, and so all they have is a frenzied fuck once or three times a week before he returns to sickbay and Jim to the bridge. Tonight will be no different, he can already tell, except it will be over all too soon.

Already, Jim is tearing at his back with one hand, stripping his cock with the other until Leonard reaches between them and touches him slower, brings him back down to make this last just a little bit longer. Jim arches one last time, goes limp, and stares at Leonard while he comes, mouthing things he can't make out, things that might have some meaning if Leonard weren't already blinded in desire. Leonard follows quickly, if he weren't already coming when Jim went still beneath him. He manages one last, weak push, and falls forward, blinking back moisture from sweating and bleeding out things he'll never have the courage to say.

And then that's all. It's over. There are ship's damages to look over, and Scotty will need Leonard to check the new prosthetic foot he got in the same attack that left Leonard scarred the week before. There's always something to be done, and it's up to Jim and Leonard to do them; to become captain and the doctor again when the spell breaks and they wake up from the fleeting world they created as young men and now visit only like this. It's like the same, old dream, only every time he wakes from it, Leonard thinks how it's disintegrated a little more.

This time, though, Jim reaches for his wrist, mumbles something Leonard doesn't immediately understand, and closes his eyes. It isn't a plea, it isn't pain, though the patches Leonard couldn't fully heal today are still raw and sore and he couldn't blame him if he were in pain. Leonard tries to get up again, and Jim tightens his grip on his wrist. A hundred scenarios of explanation pass through his head, but no part of him is unsurprised when Jim tugs his arm and asks him to stay the night. Once, and only ever once.

Without hesitation, and without regard to the morning and its looming tasks, to the now inevitable heartbreak when things turn out to be the same as always, Leonard stays. There's hope still, and he is an optimistic man under the years of tragedy, of hurting and fear. And then there's Jim, who cannot be so different than he once was, not with his head resting on Leonard's shoulder, still mouthing silent words. They're most likely plans and strategies, except the shapes of his words are wrong; too kind, brief and hesitant like old, foreign things he's learned to forget, too gentle to be in place with this world.


End file.
